North Port water plant to open Friday

“It's just a very hard water,” said Jessica Lawrence, customer service coordinator for North Port Utilities.

But the city hopes such complaints will be put to rest, starting Friday when North Port officially opens its new water treatment plant.

The plant will use semi-permeable membranes to filter out sulfate and dissolve minerals and organics that, during the dry season, are in the water that the city pumps out of Myakkahatchee Creek.

Improved water quality may pay another dividend, city officials hope: persuading more residents to hook up to the water system. North Port, with a population of around 60,000 has only 18,000 water customers. Most residents get their water from wells.

Better-tasting water may cause more households to want to connect with the city system, Lawrence said.

Currently, the city is operating its new reverse-osmosis water system for five hours a day. But, as water already in the pipelines gets replaced and the new facility becomes more active, more people are likely to notice an improved taste.

The city plans to survey about 30,000 residents who are not on its water system and ask if they would now like to connect.

The $9.5 million in upgrades at the plant include the big ticket item of the $8.9 million reverse-osmosis system, plus six wells and a new surface water intake system on the Cocoplum Waterway (a canal connected to the creek).

City utility funds and grants from the Southwest Florida Water Management District and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency paid for the project.

North Port customers typically consume 3 million gallons of water daily.

Aside from the creek and Cocoplum Waterway, the city's water sources include the Peace River Water Authority's reservoirs and, seasonally, Sarasota County's wellfields.